Stranger things

In the comments section of my recent post "A Close Shavian," Steve Hume recommended a turn-of-the-century investigation by magician and debunker David P. Abbott, who found himself at least somewhat at a loss to explain a direct-voice medium of his acquaintance. Happily, Abbott's book on the subject is sold by Amazon. The book is The History of a Strange Case, published by the Open Court Publishing Company in 1908.

Although available in book form, the piece is actually a monograph, originally printed in the magazine The Open Court in May and June 1908. It runs 50 pages and includes a postscript by Paul Carus, editor of Open Court. From Carus's remarks, it's pretty clear that Open Court was firmly devoted to debunking all spiritualist claims. Abbott himself, a confirmed skeptic, had used his deep knowledge of magic and mentalist tricks to debunk many mediums. But this case left him unsettled.

In 1906, Abbott received a letter from Mr. E.A. Parsons, later determined to be a well-known figure in the world of magic operating under the pseudonym Henry Hardin. The letter concerned a Mrs. Elizabeth Blake, described as "an elderly lady in a little town in Ohio" who offered her services as a medium. Despite his wide-ranging knowledge of magicians and the tools of their trade, Parsons was unable to determine how Mrs. Blake had fooled him – if indeed she was not the genuine article.

Mrs. Blake, Parsons recounted, "is the wife of an humble farmer and resides in an obscure country village [the town of Bradrick]. She has resided there all of her life and has reared a large family of children. She has never been over twenty miles from her home and has but little education. She is, however, very intelligent. She gave her sittings for a long time free of charge, and later began charging ten cents. She now charges one dollar, but does not insist on anything."

Her technique was unusual. She had the apparent ability to produce voices inside a sealed container. "She can use a glass lamp chimney or any closed receptacle … and I have heard the voices just as plainly coming out of the sound hole of a guitar that lay upon the table." But her usual mode of communication involved a special trumpet, or horn, that had been constructed for her. It was made of two metal cones attached at the large ends, with saucer-shaped pieces at the small ends.

"The trumpet is empty and can be examined by anyone," Parsons wrote. "The sitter takes one end of this trumpet and places it to his ear, while the lady does the same with the other end, placing it to her ear. At once the sitter plainly hears voices in the trumpet. These purport to be the voices of the spirits of his dead friends and relatives. They reply to any questions which he speaks out loud.… Now this is done in broad daylight, anywhere, even out-of-doors. I investigated this phenomenon seven hours altogether, giving it every possible test, but could obtain no clue to it.… The information which I received from the whispers was correct in every case. I had never seen the lady before, nor had I been in Ohio previously."

Abbott, intrigued, wrote to Mrs. Blake and invited her to visit him. In reply he received a letter from her physician, identified in Abbott's article only as Dr. X—. The doctor told Abbott that his patient had suffered an accident that left her crippled, making it impossible for her to travel. Abbott struck up a correspondence with Dr. X—, who was himself a believer in Mrs. Blake's mediumistic talents. In one sitting, the doctor, speaking to his purported father, asked about the time when the father took him off to college.

"When we walked towards the buildings, what was said to me by some of the students?"

"They yelled 'rat' at you."

"Spell that word," I requested, as I desired no misunderstanding.

"R-a-t," spelled the voice.

This was correct. As a young man, the doctor had attended a military school, where it was a tradition to shout "Rat!" at new arrivals.

Still more interested, Abbott decided to investigate in person. Discovering that Prof. James H. Hyslop, Secretary of the American Society for Psychical Research, was also interested, he arranged to meet Hyslop in Ohio. Abbott also arranged, at the last minute, to have his cousin, George W. Clawson, accompany him. He thought it advisable to bring someone totally unknown to Dr. X— and to Mrs. Blake. Clawson traveled under an assumed name.

Abbott and Clawson had their first meeting with Mrs. Blake before Hyslop had arrived. Dr. X— swore that he had never mentioned Abbott's name to his patient, and that she knew of him and Clawson only as two friends from New York. The séance took place in daylight, and although Mrs. Abbott said that her recent illness had deprived her of power and she could "get nothing satisfactory any more," whispery voices did come through the trumpet. Much of the whispering was unintelligible, but there were a few meaningful exchanges. Abbott writes:

Mr. Clawson now took the trumpet. I may remark that although Mr. Clawson's parents, and also a little son who was never named, were dead, his whole heart was set on obtaining a communication from his daughter Georgia, who had recently died ... . This daughter had been very affectionate, and had always called her mother by the pet names of "Muz" and "Muzzie." She also generally called her father "Daddie" in a playful way. She had recently graduated from a school of dramatic art, and while there had become affianced to a young gentleman whose Christian name is "Archimedes." He is usually called "Ark" for short. Mr. Clawson had these facts in mind, intending to use them as a matter of identification.

A voice now addressed Mr. Clawson, saying, "I am your brother."

"Who else is there? Any of my relatives?" asked Mr. Clawson.

"Your mother is here," responded the voice.

"Who else is there?"

"Your baby."

"Let the baby speak and give its name," requested Mr. Clawson.

This was followed by many indistinct words that could not be understood. Finally a name was pronounced that Mr. Clawson understood to be "Edna." He had no child of that name; but in what followed, although his lips addressed the name "Edna," his whole mine addressed his daughter, "Georgia."

"Edna, if you are my daughter, tell me what was your pet name for me?" he asked.

"I called you Daddie," the voice replied.

"What was your pet name for your mother?"

"I called her Muz, and sometimes Muzzie," responded the voice.

As for Abbott, he received what could have been the name Grandma Daily, which was correct, but he wasn't absolutely sure he'd heard it right. He also heard the names Harvey, Dave, and then Dave Harvey, as well as the initials J.A., and possibly the name Asa. All of these names bore some connection to him, but the communications were so faint and indistinct that he couldn't be certain of what he was hearing. Overall, the sitting was intriguing but unsatisfactory.

When Hyslop arrived, the investigators returned to Mrs. Blake's cottage, this time holding a nighttime séance in the dark. Now the phenomena were considerably better.

We sat a very long time, and it seemed that nothing was to occur. Finally a blue light floated over the table between us, and another appeared near the floor close to where Mr. Clawson and Mr. Blake [the medium's husband] were sitting. The trumpet on the table was also lifted up over my head and dropped to the floor by my side.

Finally, the deep-toned voice of a man spoke. It appeared to be about a foot above and behind Mrs. Blake's head. The voice was melodious, soft, low in pitch, and very distinct. This is the voice that is claimed to be that of her dead son, Abe [serving as a control or spirit guide].

The voice said that the medium was too weak to provide good manifestations that evening. Nevertheless, the sitters continued to wait.

In a short time we heard a man's voice of a different tone entirely, which Dr. X— recognized as the voice of his grandfather. These voices were open,– that is, they were in no trumpet and were vocal. The tone of this last voice was that of a very old man, and the conversation was commonplace. Soon a much more robust and powerful man's voice spoke, and said: "James, we will give way to the others."…

I now took the trumpet. That the reader may fully understand what is to follow, I shall state a few facts. My Grandmother Daily, in the latter part of her life, resided in the country in Andrew County, Missouri. There my mother grew up. My grandmother died thirteen years ago. My mother's maiden name was "Sarah Frances Daly." She was always known to all as "Fannie Daily," and where she now resides is known to everyone as "Fannie Abbott." Even Mr. Clawson did not then know her correct Christian name.... She always called my sister "Adie" [short for Ada], and myself "Davey." This was many years ago.

A voice in the trumpet now addressed me, claiming to be that of my grandmother, Mrs. Dailey. [She conveyed her love to Abbott and to his mother and father.]

"You want me to tell my mother and my father that you talked to me?" I repeated, hardly knowing what to say.

"Yes, Davey, and tell Adie, too," replied the voice very plainly.… "Tell Adie, too," the voice again repeated. It certainly seemed incredible that this voice could manifest such intimate knowledge of my family's names, one thousand miles away. I thereupon decided to further test this knowledge.

"Grandma, now if this is really you talking to me, you know my mother's first name. Tell it to me," I said.

"Sarah," answered the voice, quick as a flash. It was so quickly answered that the name "Sarah" had not entered my own consciousness at the instant.…

"What do you say it is?" I again asked.

"Sarah," again the voice plainly responded.

[After this, a voice claiming to be that of Abbott's uncle David Patterson came through, calling himself Uncle Dave.]

One remarkable feature of the voice which claimed to be that of my Uncle David, was that it resembled his voice when alive, to an extent sufficient to call to my mind the mental picture of his appearance; and for an instant to give me that inner feeling of his presence that hearing a well-known voice always produces in one. I said nothing of this at the time. I may say that during all of our sittings, no other voice bore any resemblance to the voice of the person to whom it claimed to belong, so far as I was able to detect.

The next day there was another séance at the Blake house. Again Grandma Daily purportedly came through, this time communicating with Mr. Clawson.

"What is the name of Dave's mother?" now asked Mr. Clawson.

"Sarah," answered the voice.

"Yes, but she has another name. What is her other name?" asked Mr. Clawson.

"Daily."

"That is not what I mean. Give me her other name," continued Mr. Clawson.

"Abbott," answered the voice.

"That is not what I mean. She has another name. What do I call her when I speak to her? I call her by some other name. What do I call her?" insisted Mr. Clawson.

"Aunt Fannie. Don't you think I know my own daughter's name, George?" plainly spoke the voice, so that I could understand the words outside [i.e., without pressing an ear to the trumpet].

"I know you do, Grandma, but I wanted to ask you for the sake of proving your identity," continued Mr. Clawson.

"I want Davey to tell his mother and his father that he talked to me, that I am all right, and I don't want him to forget it. Davey, I want you to be good and pray, and meet me over here," continued the voice, speaking plainly so that I could hear outside.

When I used to visit my dear old grandmother many years ago, upon parting with me she would invariably shed tears, and say, "Davey, be good and pray, and meet me in heaven."…

With the exception of the words "over here" in place of the word "heaven," these last words spoken by the voice were the identical words which my grandmother spoke to me the last time I ever heard her voice.

Mrs. Blake switched to her other ear, saying that her arm was tired. She could evidently produce the voices regardless of which side of her head was pressed to the trumpet. At this point, Abbott decided to let it be known that the name Edna, used in the previous séance for Mr. Clawson's daughter, was not correct. Shortly after, a whispered voice told Mr. Clawson, "Daddie, I am here."

"Georgia, what is the name of your sweetheart to whom you were engaged?" now asked Mr. Clawson. [The first reply could not be understood, so Mr. Clawson asked her to spell the name.]

"A-r-c, Ark," responded the voice, spelling out the letters and then pronouncing the name.

"Give me his full name, Georgia," requested Mr. Clawson.

"Archimedes," now responded the voice.

"Will you spell the name for me?"

[This was done, and the spelling was correct. Mr. Clawson asked where Ark was now.]

"He is in New York." This, Mr. Clawson afterwords informed me, was correct.…

Mr. Clawson was sufficiently overcome by the conversation that he had to leave the room. After ward, he was heard to remark, "I feel just as I did the day we buried her; and I have surely talked to my dead daughter this day."

That afternoon the group escorted Mrs. Blake into town where, Abbott tells us, "we conducted the most successful experiment of the end of our entire visit." Mr. Clawson asked Georgia for her middle name, which was correctly given as Chastine, which the voice spelled out correctly. He asked, "Where did you board when you went to school in Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts?"

"With Aunt Burgess," responded the voice.

"Tell me the name of your schoolmate friend," Mr. Clawson asked.

"Nellie Biggs," instantly responded the voice.

"With what friend did you go to school in Kansas City?" asked Mr. Clawson.

"Mary," responded the voice. [All of those answers were correct. The voice was then asked for the name of her mother's mother.]

"Grandma Marcus is here," responded the voice. I will say that Mrs. Marquis had died but recently, and that her grandchildren always pronounced her name is if spelled "Marcus."...

The loudest voice addressed another visitor, who is identified only as "the governor of a state, who happened to be present," but whose name Abbott was not at liberty to give. This voice

first spoke apparently in Mrs. Blake's lap, just as I was placing the trumpet to my ear. The voice was very deep-toned, and reverberated over the large room so loudly that Prof. Hyslop, who had stepped out, our friend's stenographer, and others entered and stood around the walls listening.

Abbott then heard from somebody purporting to be his grandmother, who sent this message to Abbott's still-living father: "Tell him that I am all right, and tell him not to be a 'doubting Thomas'."

"Grandma, that I may convince him that it was really you talk to me, tell me his name."

"George Alexander Abbott," spoke the voice, instantly and distinctly, so that all could hear.… [This was correct.]

The admonition against being a doubting Thomas was repeated. Dr. X— said, "That is the first time I ever heard that expression used in any of Mrs. Blake's sittings." Abbott notes that both he and his eldest sister clearly remembered their grandmother saying to her father, "Oh, George, don't be a 'doubting Thomas'!" He says they heard this expression many times, but at the time of the sitting it had passed from his memory.

After a few more communications, none of them very significant, the séance ended. This also was the end of Abbott's experiments with Mrs. Blake, although Hyslop stayed on for further sittings. Afterward, Dr. X— contacted Abbott to describe an experiment that he had conducted on his own. He obtained eight identical boxes and packed in each one a different article that had belonged to his late father. The boxes were then mixed and stacked, and his bookkeeper was asked to draw a box at random while the doctor's back was turned. "The object was to select a box the contents of which the doctor would not himself know." The doctor carried the box with him in his coat pocket when he went to the séance. Abbott tells us:

During this time the doctor requested his wife to ask the voice [of the doctor's father] what was in the former's pocket.…

"I am very anxious to have you do this so that I can report it to Prof. Heslop, and if you say so I will take the lid off the box to enable you to see better," spoke the Doctor.

"That is not necessary. I can see the contents as well with the lid on as with it off," responded the voice.

"Well, what is in it?" asked the Doctor.

"My pass I used to travel with," replied the voice. The Doctor's father used to have several annual passes. Some of them he never used, but one he used almost exclusively. Upon examining the box it was found to contain this pass.

Abbott was clearly unsettled by the entire experience, and he does not claim to be able to explain it completely. He does, however, advance certain theories or hypotheses, to which he attaches varying degrees of certainty. How convincing these are is a debatable.

He is quite certain that Mrs. Blake produced the voices herself. He writes:

I am satisfied that the whispered words originate in her throat, and that the vocal voices are produced lower down in the chest. These sounds I believe are conducted from the throat through an abnormal Eustachian canal, to a point close to the tympanic membrane. The office of this membrane is to transmit sound waves; so that once they are there, the sound waves are easily transferred into the outer or auditory canal. How these sounds can be guided into either ear at will, and how the nostrils can prevent their exit, I can only surmise.

In other words, he believes that "these voices came out of the lady's ears." I am no expert in medical science or anatomy, but this strikes me as exceedingly unlikely, especially when we consider that some of the voices were loud enough to be heard from some distance away. Remember that the voice that addressed the unnamed governor in broad daylight, in an office in town (far from Mrs. Blake's home), was said to be loud enough to be heard from an adjacent room. It is not at all clear to me how a voice produced deep in the chest and somehow channeled through the eustachian tube and out through the ear could possibly be that loud, even assuming it is possible to channel vocalizations through the ears in the first place. To be honest, I find this entire theory patently absurd.

Nevertheless, Abbott pronounces himself content with it. It leaves him, however, with the problem of explaining how Mrs. Blake knew so much about him and Mr. Clawson, especially since the latter was traveling incognito. He admits that he has no definite explanation, but suggests that Mrs. Blake might be part of a network of mediums who exchanged information about their clients. Abbott could have been known to the mediumistic community in his capacity as a debunker. Mr. Clawson had visited mediums on prior occasions.

Of course, this assumes that Mrs. Blake, who lived in an isolated village and had little or no known contact with the wider world (she herself said she had never traveled more than two and a half miles from home in her lifetime), was able to obtain such information. It also assumes that the information gathered by such a network was extraordinarily detailed and precise, and that it could be conveyed to her very quickly — presumably between the first and second séances, both held on the same day (since she could not have known Clawson would be there until the first séance, and she gave him good evidence at the second séance). When we consider that Clawson did not give his real name at first, though on a subsequent day he incautiously revealed it, the puzzle of how Mrs. Blake could possibly obtain any information about him only deepens.

Here are some excerpts of Abbott's hypotheses, which he himself does not seem to be very confident in:

That the name "Brother Eddy" was a guess is quite improbable, but of course could be possible; while it would have been a possibility for the name "Grandma Daily" to have been secured in advance.…

In regard to the pet names, "Muz," "Muzzie," and "Daddie," given Mr. Clawson at the first sitting, only the possibility of a misinterpretation of sounds can be suggested. The names given me, "Dave Harvey," "Asa," and my own name, belong to those that could have been secured in advance.…

[At the second sitting] I secured the names "Sarah" and "Ada," together with the correct relationship of the latter. There was no misinterpretation of sounds. These names belong to those that it would have been possible to have secured in advance, but at the time I was so thoroughly convinced that such was not the case, that I was greatly startled.…

"The names "Lizzie" or "Lissie," and "Aunt Fannie," given Mr. Clawson at this sitting, are among those that could have been secured in advance. As to the names "Georgia" and "Archimedes," with the latter's correct location at the time, together with the correct spelling of his name, I can offer nothing satisfactory; for I do not think there was any misinterpretation of sounds.… My grandmother's parting request may be a phrase generally used by the voices….

This last point refers to the words "Be good and pray, and meet me over here," which were almost identical to an expression Abbott's grandmother always used when they parted, and indeed used the very last time he saw her. To chalk this up as a "stock phrase" (Abbott's term) used by cheating mentalists strikes me as pretty desperate.

[In the afternoon sitting on the second day] the names "Chastine," "Aunt Burgess," "Nellie Biggs," "Mary," "Grandma Marcus," my father's correct name, and also my wife's first name, were given. In addition to this was the name "Dody," the request from my father "Not to be a 'doubting Thomas'" and the statement that my wife's mother is alive. Some of these things Mr. Clawson did not know, and a number of them I did not know. We must, however, consider as a possibility that [Mr. Clawson] might have imparted certain information to Mrs. Blake during his fifteen-minute ride [to the office in town]. He assured me that he did not, and he is certainly sincere in his statement.… In case he did so, the matter evidently passed from his memory very quickly, for he was positive that such was not the case.

In other words, the sitting can be explained only if Clawson acted like a complete idiot, blurting out reams of personal information, and then immediately forgot everything he had said, even though it all came up in the séance a short time later.

Abbott concludes that he cannot assert that any fraud was used, at least concerning the information provided, and that he can only suggest possibilities. "I must still leave the case to a certain extent shrouded in mystery."

The book's short postscript is less open to the idea of mystery. Paul Carus tells us that the Blake case is "not so extraordinary as to preclude probabilities which would reduce the mysterious facts to mere stultificaions without even throwing any suspicion upon the honesty of the main actors concerned." In other words, he feels the whole thing is pretty easy to explain, even though the actual investigator and confirmed skeptic, David Abbott, doesn't agree.

Carus concludes with an airy wave of the hand: "…it would not be difficult to point out several explanations which are possible and would dispel the faintest shadow of mystery." Sadly, he does not enlighten us as to what those simple explanations might be.

Comments

This post is already very long, but there's one thing I probably should have added. Abbott sincerely believed he had explained the voices; it was only the messages they communicated that left him unsettled. The voices, he thought, had been thoroughly debunked.

Yet it should be clear that his explanation of the voices as coming from Mrs. Blake's ears is completely implausible. How on earth could anyone force articulate speech through the eardrums? And how could this speech possibly be loud enough to be heard at a distance?

If his debunking of the "voice" aspect of Mrs. Blake's mediumship is unsatisfactory, it raises the question of how many of Abbott's other debunkings were similarly far-fetched. Abbott is famed for having exposed many fake mediums, but were his exposures in other cases as dubious as the bizarre pseudo-medical explanation he provided in this one?

More generally, how much of the phenomena of physical mediumship have been debunked in just such a questionable manner?

When Skeptics say that an investigator has debunked or exposed a medium or psychic, it is worth looking closely at the actual debunking to see if it really holds up. Sometimes it will; sometimes it won't. Not every debunking is conclusive, even if it's presented that way.

This is a trend I've seen in pseudo-skeptics before: when they come across something they cannot explain in any satisfactory manner, they seemingly try to forget that it ever happened, select even the flimsiest answer that would make even Spock roll his eyes (producing voices through the eardrum?), or giving a non-answer that the phenomina is easily debunked... which begs the question of if it is so easily exposed as a fraud, why haven't they done it?

To be fair, though, everyone engages in this kind of self-deception with anything we don't like, spiritual or otherwise. Sometimes filtering out something that would cause our entire world view to implode can make it easier to digest later on, and avoid a complete mental breakdown that would ensue if we realized that so much we believed to be true was, in fact, a lie. But to those on the outside, it can be baffling why something so intriguing or seemingly airtight can be so ignored so easily.

Clear, concise assessment, Michael, and very interesting to boot! Whenever I read such accounts of sceptical inquiries I have to adjust my reality button to 'boggle threshold' just to follow the argument put forward. It reminds me of the scientists who claimed that heavier-than-air flight was impossible - whilst, presumably, ignoring the migrating geese flying overhead.

Why would anyone of sound mind wrangle with such people? Why do we wrangle with the same kind of willful stupidity that we see expressed here and elsewhere by fundamentalist sceptics? I'd just as soon waste my Sunday morning arguing with a Jehovah's Witness.

That aside, there was one evidential point that hit home with me and that's the blue light that was mentioned. As I've said here before, I recognise that phenomenon and have seen it often.

BTW, have you come to any kind of personal judgement on the Flint material yet?

I think "coming from her ear" doesn't necessarily mean produced by the eardrum. Assuming that there occasions when physical mediumship can produce what is claimed, what often appears to be required seems to be a space of uncertain capacity and darkness,

David Abbott proposed several highly speculative explanations for the precipitated paintings of the Bang Sisters which included hiding an accomplice in the basement of the Bangs sisters' homes and a hidden elevator built into the walls of the 'séance' room, which apparently nobody was able to detect; substituting pre-painted portraits for the blank canvases (At times the Bangs sisters did not know the names of their sitters and/or there were no photographs of the deceased for whom the precipitated paintings were requested. Sitters often brought their own canvases and marked them so they could not be substituted.)

Abbott changed his explanations several times until one came to him in a dream. He published that one and other magicians developed his theory into a stage show. Of course the conditions on stage were not even close to those of the actual sittings with the Bangs sisters. - AOD

Julie, I still have no final opinion on Flint, and maybe I never will. I've bought his memoir Voices in the Dark, which I intend to read soon, though of course it can't be taken as an objective source. The only conclusion I've come to, so far, is that Flint is not one of the strongest cases I've researched. There are too many doubtful aspects of his mediumship for him to occupy the same category in my mind as Piper, Leonard, Garrett, et al.

Abbott regarded the blue light as an effect "produced by dampening the finger and then touching the dampened portion with the head of a sulphur match." He added that the light on the table was always within Mrs. Blake's reach, and a light seen on the floor was near her husband's big toe. Although he does not say so, he seems to have regarded the husband as an accomplice, and I assume he would say the husband was the source of the "Abe" (spirit control) voice heard in the dark, which was more robust than most of the others.

Paul, you may be right about "coming from her ear," but Abbott definitely meant that the voices were produced by her own efforts, with the aid of a presumably freakish physiognomy, not by any supernatural means.

"Abbott regarded the blue light as an effect "produced by dampening the finger and then touching the dampened portion with the head of a sulphur match." "

Perhaps in the case in question, perhaps not. But that phenomenon has spontaneously appeared in my presence and has been witnessed by others. Both in terms of bright sparks and luminous cloud of vivid colour. So I see no reason for me not to believe the phenomenon was genuine.

Michael, I also have no final belief about Flint. I also don't think that he is one of the strongest cases providing evidence of continuing existence of consciousness after death of the body.

I do have an opinion however which I know will cause some people to bristle. The Flint case is unusual because there are many (100s) tapes of voices supposedly of deceased people speaking. Such tapes that are available on the internet apparently were all recorded by George Woods and Betty Greene or Leslie Flint (?). I have not found any tapes recorded by other people but apparently there were/are some according to statements made in various web sites about Flint.. The tapes are very interesting and subject to hearty critique as one would expect.

It is unfortunate that there are not tapes of other direct voice mediums. The Flint tapes subject Flint to ridicule which other direct voice mediums do not have to endure. I have become very impressed with the account by William Usborne Moore of 'Etta' Wriedt's direct voice séances but there are no tapes to evaluate, only information that was published by Moore in his book "The Voices" which I find interesting because according to Moore, Wriedt manifested direct voices from several people at the same time, with and without a trumpet, in the light at times and in the dark; some with whom she conversed. There were also lights and wispy apparitions at her séances according to Moore. I don't believe that there was ectoplasm or full figure materializations of spirits lasting for more than a few seconds. Moore included many strong testimonials of people who had sat with Wriedt and I believe that the ones Moore included in his book were mostly highly favorable. Moore also wrote "Glimpses of the Next State" in which he also provided positive documentation about Wriedt along with others, e.g., Bangs sisters.

I have come to understand that during the heyday of these séances there was, to a greater or lesser amount, people who were strongly opposed to and vehemently vocal about many Christian doctrines and dogmas some of which thinking people still do not accept today, e.g., resurrection of the physical body after eons of sleep, purgatory, condemnation of spirits to hell, ascension of the physical body of Jesus into heaven, harps, golden streets and sitting on a cloud all day adoring and praising God. Such people often acknowledge that they were agnostic, atheist or spiritualists. W. Usborne Moore in "Glimpses of the Next State" spends many pages condemning the Christian dogmas categorizing himself as an agnostic but quite clearly he believed in spirits.

On one of the tapes George Woods and Betty Greene also averred that they were not religious but were spiritualists.

Surprisingly Charles Darwin, states early on his "Descent of Man' that one of his two goals in developing his theories about evolution, natural selection and sexual selection was to destroy the idea of a Creator as espoused in the Christian Bible. (Sorry I don't have the direct quote with me. but I found it interesting to know what motivated Darwin from the very beginning; rather than let the facts speak for themselves.) The spiritualist's concept of an after life was more like an earth life and therefore more understandable and comforting to those who could not accept a fundamentalist Christian view.

What I mean to say is that there were apparently some people vehemently promoting spiritualism ( not Darwin) who were opposed to the Christian view of spiritual life. I think that the desire to destroy the Christian view of heaven motivated and energized people like George Woods, Betty Greene and yes, even William Usborne Moore (whom I do respect) to doggedly and energetically promote a spiritual life of their making even to the extent of faking, when necessary, evidence for its existence. That is not to say that I think that all of the reported 'evidence' of direct voice was fake but in order to promote a proper and just cause as perceived by those involved in direct voice séances anything was fair game to accomplish their goal. Betty Greene is heard to say that she wanted it known that , "Those lovely souls from the spirit world have not come through just for our benefit, but to give a message to the world, and they are relying on us to pass that message on through the medium of the tapes, and they are determined that people should receive them." (That is quite a charge for Greene and Woods to be directed by the spirit world to spread the message of spiritualism.)

George Woods had this to say about Betty Greene,"She gave up 27 years of her life working with me in research, proving survival, that all life lives beyond the grave, and helping me to spread these good tidings [of great joy] throughout the world. Never at anytime did she think of herself, but worked over those years in forwarding this glorious truth, without a break or time for a holiday; she gave up her whole life, year after year, day by day, in hard work for others, up to the time she was called home to a new life, where she will still carry on serving humanity until the day comes when I shall also be called home to join her in this great work together. When I sat beside her bed in the hospital... she whispered to me, ‘Please carry on this work, George, for there will never be a better world until all the people in it know about a future life.' [Their version of a future life that is!]

In the Flint case I think there may have been a "Group Flint' including Flint, Greene, Woods and perhaps other spiritualists in Flint's circle of friends; kind of like "The Imperator Group" of the Piper sessions that were pledged to promote spiritualism and an afterlife and that the Flint tapes were just an impressive way to market that view.

Of course I don't know if any of the forgoing is reasonable or not but I believe that there was something more going on behind the scenes with the Leslie Flint tapes. It is likely that whatever it was if anything, it will never be known. - AOD

David Abbott was skeptical of physical mediumship and did a good job of debunking the tricks of slate-writing or billet reading feats but he was a believer in psychic powers. He was not an extreme skeptic like other magicians of his era. It is a bit of a straw man to make out he was a total skeptic. I am not sure if people here were under that impression or not.

He was a member of the American Society for Psychical Research. He also endorsed the claims of psychic Gene Dennis.

Search on online for "Gene Dennis" and Einstein, this was the psychic who managed to trick Einstein. Abbott at one point had acted as her personal manager. He believed she had genuine psychic powers.

Abbott's statements about Dennis can be found in his rare booklet "The Wonder Girl", this 32 page booklet was discovered very late, it was only published in 1992. It might be worth tracking down.

Abbott may have come to believe in psychic powers later in life, but at the time he wrote about Mrs. Blake, he did not. He says at one point in his monograph that he gives no credence to claims of clairvoyance or similar abilities.

As for Einstein, it's not clear that he ever endorsed Gene Dennis. He did meet her and had his photo taken with her, but the quote attributed to him is disputed. See the third story at this link:

Thank you. You put so much work into these posts, and they are extremely informative and well-written.

This is a classic case of Skeptical reasoning. I'm curious how an unsophisticated woman before the year 1908 (when the book was published) who probably didn't even have easy access to a telephone could "secure in advance" any kind of information.

But here's the Skeptical con. Abbott at least takes the case serious enough to try to come up with horsehocky explanations for what he witnessed. But then *later* Skeptics will do as Ian said above and "seemingly try to forget that it ever happened." So it's, Herp derp, that was so long ago, and it was probably nothinggg... Just forget about ittt...

So, just deny the evidence, and eventually the sands of time will cover it over. Clever.

"He says at one point in his monograph that he gives no credence to claims of clairvoyance or similar abilities."

I think that sentence speaks volumes!

I find it interesting that many of the great thinkers of the past had an instinctive feel for psychic phenomena. Two who immediately spring to mind are Jung and Goethe - the latter being the author of one of my all time favourite quotes:
"The future casts its shadow before it."

From as far back as I can remember, I've always had intimations of the future. The self-fulfilling prophecy of an optimistic outlook on life? Perhaps, but I don't think so.

Great post, Michael! Blake sounds like the real deal. Far more convincing than Flint.

I think we can all learn from the mental contortions that Abbot goes through to try to explain away the phenomena that he experiences with Blake. We all do that sort of thing - sometimes as absurdly as Abbot - when out world view is threatened.

Regardless of the mechanics of where the voice in the trumpet came from she was able to produce evidential material that she had no way of knowing beforehand. This is what I find interesting. I could care less about where the voice originated, what interests me is that Mrs. Elizabeth Blake was able to produce such evidential material. Something mysterious was happening.

I agree that Einstein is expressing caution, but he does so unconvincingly. His alternative explanation is "some unconscious hypnotic influence from person to person." But since the two experimenters (Sinclair and his wife) were in separate rooms, what would such an "influence" be, if not a form of telepathy?

Seems to me a sloppy statement from such a brilliant mind, and a common pseudo-skeptical tactic—when you have no legitimate alternative, just throw another set of words at the problem.

As I continue to read William Usborne Moore's "The Voices" I read of a couple more interesting things about the séances with Etta Wriedt. Sometimes the voices reportedly occur even when Etta was not in the séance room. Sometimes sitters heard their deceased dogs barking from the hereafter, felt them jump up on their lap and nuzzle their face. Interesting! No?

If Moore's accounts and attestations of Etta Wriedt are accurate then she has got to be the most versatile medium ever. Apparently she facilitated everything except a self-playing accordion a la D.D. Home. - AOD

I just thought I'd offer a few thoughts on some possible ways forward with the question of the genuineness of independent direct voice…given that this discussion seems to have been centered, in its latter stages, around the location of the actual source of the voices themselves. That appears to be, according to subjective earwitness accounts, somewhere close to the mediums’ heads, at least on most occasions. We’ve heard a lot about Flint, but the same has been said about plenty of others –,e.g. Mona van der Watt (http://zerdinisworld.com/?p=336), Gladys Osborne Leonard, etc. But, I'm going to leave the question of the modus operandi (paranormal or otherwise) of the voice production to one side, because it strikes me that we cannot sensibly begin to attempt an explanation for that until the actual sound source location is determined on a case by case basis.

Someone alluded earlier to the possibility of using sound source location technology to settle the question. This is far from being a new idea. To my knowledge it was attempted for the first time with Gladys Osborne Leonard back in the 1930's. A frustratingly short note in the Journal of the Society for Psychical Research (Vol. 28, 1933-34, pp.88-89.) gives details of experiments carried out with the help of Abbey Road technicians with Gladys Osborne Leonard, who had developed the phenomenon relatively late in her career. They found, using an extremely primitive double microphone array, connected to headphones, that the voice originated from the same location as the medium. However, the system relied on subjective judgement by ear and it was claimed to only be ‘accurate’ to within six inches. The note also admits that listening fatigue could be skewing the listeners' judgements - which is what one would expect. That is pretty hopeless, and (given what is possible today) cannot really be taken very seriously.

We could do much better than that now: 'Acoustic Cameras' (devices that utilise up to 200 miniature microphones and overlay a visual depiction of the sound source over real-time video feed) are used routinely in industry every day for a variety of purposes. They are incredibly accurate. However, they are also incredibly expensive - normally up to around £30,000, although I recently found a relatively 'affordable' system for around £10,000. In case anyone is wondering, the hire cost for only one day is about the same - at least it was when I made serious enquiries a couple of years ago. Professional systems also present one other problem for psi research use, in that they do not provide night vision capability - either infrared, or thermal imaging. That would probably be crucial - for obvious reasons. The only modern attempt at locating the sound of voices in recent times that I’m aware of involved Warren Caylor (http://www.eckhardkruse.net/physmed/index.html?en). But, as this was not done in conjunction with filming, it was rather a waste of time in my opinion, though a worthy and interesting attempt.

Nevertheless, about five years ago I was helping Barrie Colvin to carry out follow up work to his 2010 JSPR paper (Vol. 73.2, April 2010, PP.65-93.) about ostensible paranormal raps. We decided that, for the same basic reasons as with IDV, we needed to locate and document the actual sound source location of any raps that were recorded. After many months of experimentation I managed to design a working 'belts and braces' system involving an array of only three modern studio mic's that would locate the actual sound source (of test raps produced by normal means, in two dimensions…three dimensions would require at least four mic’s) on a séance table with an accuracy of between 1mm and 5cm. The raps were manually (and arduously) plotted on a graph which, when combined with two video feeds (over and under the table) could provide pretty good evidence that the raps were not coming from a medium's hands or the natural creak points of the table – or vice versa. Initial results were promising, but there is still much work that needs to be done: For example, it would be possible to automate the system – but that would take coding time that I just don’t have at the moment.

Indeed, my system is incredibly cumbersome to use and calculating the results is time consuming and could be prone to experimenter bias. It is also the case that sounds with very sharp transients (like raps) are a lot more amenable to accurate manual calculation, by eye from oscilloscope waveforms, than a voice would be – for reasons that I won’t go into now.

Suffice to say, though, after having been involved in attempting to use technology to settle questions such as this, I can say that it is a lot more difficult in practice than most people would assume, I’m sure. And, of course, it’s no use whatsoever having the technology if you’ve got nothing to use it with. We need a new generation of mediums and unbiased researchers to take this forward. That is actually the most difficult issue; but, if it can be addressed at some juncture then, at least, we might reach a point where Skeptics can be given a chance to accuse the researchers of fraud (or incompetence) if the research produces results that they do not like. As it stands, there is so much mutual mistrust between the VERY few mediums available and the research community, that I do not see any developments in this area happening any time soon.

This is a proposed apparatus that would facilitate communication with the deceased. Such technologies have been pursued before, notably in the case of the Spiricom device spearheaded by George Meek in the 1970s. They have not met with notable success. Maybe this time will be different.

Various funding options were considered a few years ago (including an SPR grant). But I wouldn't encourage anyone to spend that amount of dosh unless I was certain that it was going to be used productively. At the moment, because of the factors I mentioned, there has to be some doubt as to whether that would be the case.

Still, as with all technology, there is probably scope for prices to come down a lot more. In the meantime, I was discussing the possibility of building a more sophisticated system with a work colleague today. It's certainly feasible. It would just take time...and probably involve use of a lot of Anglo Saxon expletives at times ;)

Thank you for the write up. I haven't had known much about Flint until now.

However, lately I have been in doubt about the genuineness of mental mediumship, even if they are highly specific and not easy to guess. For example, I've been watching some performances by the mentalist Colin Cloud, who is able to guess things like a number sequence (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu_N-9SSq0k
), specific phrases (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRm6Lr0ax6A
), and others (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JxqWst4PaHE
). Some of his hits, like guessing random occupations and names and exotic pets, definitely look like they could rival those of some of the best mediums like Piper or Leonard. He also doesn't do much fishing, and the information he collects beforehand does not appear to be very indicative of the actual answers which he does succeed in getting. In most of the cases there don't appear to be possibilities of stooges.

As such, I am no longer sure that even the most thoroughly studied mediums are genuine, even if they appear to be, seeing how accurate and specific at least this one mentalist is able to get. What do you think?

Has Colin Cloud be tested under controlled conditions? I don't think performances in a venue that he himself controls can prove much.

Piper, for instance, had to do readings for people she had never met, who came to her under assumed names, whose visits were not known in advance, and who didn't enter the room until after she was in trance. She was brought to England to do readings for people who had never even been to America, and whose names she didn't know.

Gary Schwartz tested mediums who had do a reading over the phone, speaking to someone they could neither see nor hear, whose identity was unknown to them and even unknown to Schwartz at the time (the call was placed by computer, choosing a number at random from several possible options).

If Cloud can perform under these circumstances, I'm sure there are researchers who would love to have him do so. No mentalists were willing to work with Schwartz after they learned what the test conditions were.

I wouldn't count any of the types of information you mention as being especially evidential of post-mortem survival, simply because they could all be obtained by either hot/cold reading or many other tricks employed by mentalists. It's always amused me that people are impressed by, say, a medium giving the full name and address of the deceased party...stuff like that, to me, under most circumstances, is rather suspicious. What I would count as, perhaps, evidential is finely detailed information concerning bizarre, obscure events only known by either the deceased and the recipient; or (better still) not known to the recipient because the events happened, for example, before they were born and require confirmation from a much older relative. If the information is relayed without any fishing around, or leading questions, or any signs of any sort of routine, with a medium you've never met before...then so much the better. If you've booked the sitting under a false name (or have taken other measures), then better still.

I've had, literally, hundreds of 'messages' from mediums over the last 40 years or so. And I can count the number that reach that standard on one hand. Very high quality mental mediumship is exceptionally rare, in my experience.

I don't think he's done controlled condition tests, but the conditions do seem to preclude stooges or prior research. I am not sure where the limits of deductive reasoning would be, so I still have some worries about fully accepting mediums. A lot of the work done with Piper, Leonard, etc. appear to be beyond deductive reasoning to me, but they might not be to a true master of the craft.

Would you happen to know of any proxy sittings with Piper? I am aware of the ones done with Leonard, but I am having a hard time locating those done with Piper.

I'm not familiar with Tuckett's objections, but I understand they are summarized and addressed by Walter Franklin Prince* in one chapter of his book "The Enchanted Boundary." The complete book is available to read online or download at this link:

Thanks Michael for the link to the book "The Enchanted Boundary" by Dr. Walter Franklin "Pierce" (I think this typo should be 'Prince'). I for one would never want to tangle with Dr. Prince in any argument. His investigations , including the one of Pearl Curran and Patience Worth are beyond reproach. He had a gentlemanly way of getting his thoughts across without being crude, crass or insulting to his opponents.

After completely rebutting several of Dr. Tuckett's criticisms of Leonora Piper, Dr. Prince, true to form wrote,"One gets the impression that he [Dr. Tuckett] is an earnest soul, without malice and meaning well. But out of the innocence of his amateur quality and out of that other quality, which if noted in another he would call bias, and which at all events causes him to flit and dip as selectively over a field of evidence as a bumble bee over a field of flowers, he derives paradoxically, his superficial appearance of effectiveness."

One can't help but admire Dr.Prince's cool head and intelligent wit when he confronts a foe. - AOD

I’m sure M.R. and everyone else would be fascinated to see everything that Lloyd Tuckett has to say about the ASPR/SPR research into Mrs Piper. If only ‘Ranger’ had given us a clue as to the title of the book in question!

But, sadly (in a style reminiscent of our ostensibly departed friend ‘Bill’), ‘Ranger’ has left us with nothing but a brief quote that amounts to no more than an unqualified bald statement masquerading as proven fact. So we’ll just have to assume that Tuckett’s ‘The Evidence for the Supernatural: a critical study made with "uncommon sense”’, published in 1911, is the book referred to.

I know that ‘muscle reading’ was considered and accounted for by the studies in question (e.g Richard Hodgson writing in ‘Proceedings’ VIII, 1892, p.8)). So despite not having read Tuckett’s book, I’d be willing to predict that contemporary reviewers who were more familiar with the Piper studies than him gave it short shrift for being shallow, badly researched, selective and ignorant. I seem to recall (thank you Michael), that Prince does the same, and I’ll refamiliarise myself with his book later.

Oh my! A review from ‘The Journal of the Society for Psychical Research’ (May 1912), just appeared – as if by magic (yawn, I really need to get out more)…

“THIS book is disappointing. A rumour—perhaps false—preceded it that Dr. Tuckett considered that he had demolished the work of the S.P.R. We therefore awaited the appearance of the book with a little anxiety and a good deal of curiosity, thinking he might have discovered weak points in our treatment of psychical research which had escaped our own notice. It turns out, however, that he mainly addresses himself to readers of such works as Mr. Beckles Willson's Occultism and Common Sense or the popular psychic treatises of Mr. Thomson Jay Hudson, and his treatment of his subject is correspondingly superficial.

Dr. Tuckett does not appear to have much acquaintance at first hand with the work of our society, but he has devoted a long appendix to criticism of the first Report on Mrs. Piper—that in Vol. VI. of the Proceedings, which gives an account of her English sittings in 1889—which he selected for careful reading. He classifies and discusses weak points which he observes in the evidence given in this report, but they are weak points which we have never overlooked and therefore add nothing to our knowledge. The newest thing in his treatment of S.P.R. evidence is an attempt in this appendix to show that bias in the estimation of evidence has been exhibited by the founders of the Society generally, and by Mr. Myers, Professor William James, Dr. Hodgson, Sir Oliver Lodge, Dr. Leaf, Mr. Piddington and Mr. Podmore in particular. Whether he succeeds in this we must leave his readers to judge, but we may readily agree with him (p. 354) that " However much we may think we are on our guard against the fallacies connected with [bias], we are still liable to be its victims. This is true of every human being"— including, as Dr. Tuckett would fully admit, himself.

He concludes his review of Mrs. Piper's case by "a few remarks about cross-correspondences," although, as he admits, he has "not made any detailed study of the subject." His limitation of his study of Mrs. Piper to her earlier sittings has led him into an amusing slip, for he assumes that as there was contact in these there was also contact later, so that muscle-reading will explain some successes in 1907. This is typical of his somewhat loose method of dealing with the evidence.

Dr. Tuckett's main aim is to show that supernormal explanations of phenomena are often adopted on insufficient grounds. This naturally leads him to choose weak cases as illustrations; but unfortunately he then seems sometimes to confuse them with strong ones. With the aim itself the S.P.R. has no quarrel, but it is to be regretted that a man with a scientific training which might have enabled him. to deal usefully with the subject should have undertaken the task without adequate information. In the absence of this his criticisms fail to have any real value. E. M. S.”

Steve of course the Society for Psychical Research that you belong to are not going to say anything positive about an entirely skeptical book on parapsychology! Why would they?

Eleanor Mildred Sidgwick was not alone, there are many other negative reviews for Tuckett's book written by SPR members. I have read them all only Dr. Prince's criticisms were worth reading.

But if we look in the The Lancet, this is a top quality peer-reviewed medical journal there is an entirely positive review for Dr. Tuckett's book (a link to this can be found on Ivor Lloyd Tuckett's Wikipedia entry), likewise the British Medical Journal was also positive even suggesting that Tuckett had entirely 'underminded' the telepathy hypothesis for Piper's mediumship. Both reviews say it is a 'balanced' book and recommends it for professional psychologists.

All the science journals positively reviewed Tuckett's book back in the day. Lets not forget that.

It is not as good as Donovan Rawcliffe's "The Psychology of the Occult" though. Rawcliffe actually considered his own book a successor to Tuckett's. You might want to check that book out. Even a believer like Eric Dingwall had good things to say about it.

I suspect that both Lone Researcher and Ranger are a troll named Forests who has caused much havoc on this and other paranormal sites. Forests has a particular penchant for turn-of-the-century skeptical literature. He uses a dynamic IP address and a variety of pseudonyms and email addresses, all so that he cannot be blocked. He has a superficial knowledge of the subject at best, isn't concerned with intelligent debate, and wants only to stir up trouble. His destructive antics were largely responsible for my decision to impose comment moderation on this blog.

I plan to relegate any further posts that appear to come from Forests to the spam folder, regardless of what alias he uses.

Written under a section called “Annotations”, the Lancet article referenced in ‘WakyWiki’ recommending a read of Tuckett’s book is a short one and a third column by an anonymous author. To use today’s vernacular it is a “Nothing Burger”. It doesn’t even make sense in some parts. But, what can one expect as a reference used by those who concoct articles in . . . well, I can’t bring myself to mention the name again. - AOD

Thanks Michael/Amos. 'Nothing Burger' (lol). I was going to check that out myself. I've never heard that term before, but it is what I'd expected to find. Of course, the reviewer was probably even more ignorant of the research than Tuckett. Sigh!

Of course, EMS was one of the most gifted critical thinkers of her generation. You've gotta laugh.

Steve Hume,
Apparently I am one of the few 'believers' who appreciates Eleanor Sidgwick's report and evaluation of the "misses" of Leonora Piper as published in the Journal of the SPR. Perhaps Mrs. Sidgwick is under-appreciated by some who want to 'poo-poo' anyone who criticizes Mrs. Piper. Eleanor Sidgwick was a smart woman, far ahead of her time perhaps and I value her insights into Mrs. Piper's séances. - AOD